Glavin Office Student Spotlight: Tiffany Shum
Another student that was showcased on our Student Spotlight was Tiffany Shum…
- Where is your hometown/country? Los Angeles, California (where the best frozen yogurt and burgers are :D)
- What’s one assignment/project that you are currently or working on that you are excited about? For my supply chain class, my team and I are
currently looking into a local pizza restaurant and seeing where we can help improve the supply chain of making pizzas in a more efficient and timely fashion. With the help of the restaurant, we were able to obtain data on the pizza making process, number of customers and lead time, as well as the ingredients that went into each pie. Currently, we are working with variables such as the oven as the bottleneck and finding the re-order point for asset of perishable inventories of ingredients. I’m excited to work on a supply chain for something I love to eat, pizza, and help out a local business!
- What are you most proud of accomplishing during your time at Babson? Throughout my four years at Babson, I am most proud of becoming an individual who is confident in what she says and can express her thoughts in a thoughtful and concise manner. Coming in as a freshman, I can definitely say that I was much more timid in speaking up in a group setting and within the classroom. However, after becoming an FME Mentor and spending time abroad, I became much more comfortable in speaking and providing advice to the freshmen that I helped mentor, as well as not being afraid to ask questions in any context to get the help I needed. This has been especially helpful in both career and personal growth.
- Within the Babson community, is there anyone/ any group of people you would like to recognize? I came to college with one of my closest friends from high school, Sukanya, who I would like to recognize for her commitment to the community at Babson, her consistent hard work and patience to help others, and most importantly, her open door for a conversation about anything. As she is one of the best supporters I have, I am so thankful and am amazed by her consistent efforts to be involved and care for the people around her.
- What was the best experience/memory you had while you were abroad? One of the fondest memories I had while in Shanghai was on our week-long
excursion on the Silk Road. Our group of students from CIEE Shanghai had the amazing opportunity to visit a local trade university in Dunhuang, which is a small city outside of Lanzhou. We participated in a fun and friendly game of basketball, learned some traditional Chinese dances, and cooked with the culinary department of the school. While this was a short visit, I remember vividly my interaction with this student who majors in carving vegetables into different flowers and spreads as décor for large hotels and restaurants. Not only were our cultural backgrounds and the cities we grew up varied in size, it was so refreshing to see that his major was something very artistic and technical as compared to a business student’s perspective. I had a lot of fun learning how to make this pink radish into a rose, failing miserably, and having him help me out with making a perfect flower. This cultural exchange was so valuable to me to meet with a student from the other side of the globe.
- What advice would you give someone who was either planning to go abroad, or who was weary about going? Going abroad was one of the best decisions that I’ve made—in my experiences it was more than just the amazing food and travelling that I would be able to fulfill while abroad, but truly a time to reflect upon my identity as an Asian American in different contexts but also to see studying and business in an environment that I am not used to. From hearing about my Chinese tutor’s daily life as a student in Shanghai, to living and breathing the Italian lifestyle with my host family, I can definitely say those were some of the best takeaways during my time abroad. This is a once in a lifetime experience, and I believe this is something that everyone would love to take part in. I encourage anyone who is on the fence about going abroad to talk to someone in the Glavin Office or an Education Abroad Peer Advisor to get the inside scoop on how studying abroad worked out for them.